“Kinda breezy out there now,” said Lander. “You want me to nip down and offer a few encouraging words to the eggheads?”
“Good call,” said Mottram, “Tell ’em we’re fine. Cuttyhunk’s made for this weather. For Christ’s sake don’t tell ’em we could roll over any minute if we don’t watch ourselves. This goddamned cross-sea is the worst I’ve seen in quite a while. There ain’t a good course we can heave-to on. Tell ’em I expect to be behind the islands before long.”
Down below, the scientists had ceased work. The slightly built bespectacled Professor Henry Townsend and his team were sitting together in a spacious guest lounge that had been deliberately constructed in the middle of the ship to minimize the rise-and-fall effect of a big sea. Townsend’s senior oceanographer, Roger Deakins, a man more accustomed to operating in a deep-diving research submarine, was already feeling a bit queasy.
The sudden change in weather had taken them all by surprise. Kate Goodwin, a tall, thoughtful scientist with a doctorate from the joint MIT/Woods Hole Oceanography Program, was belatedly dispensing tablets for seasickness to those in need.
“I’ll take a half-pound of ’em,” said Deakins.
“You only need one,” said Kate, laughing.
“You don’t know how I feel,” he replied.
“No. Thank God,” she said, a bit wryly. Their banter was interrupted by an icy blast through the aft door and the dramatic appearance of a snowman wearing Bob Lander’s cheerful face.
“Nothing to worry about, guys,” he said, shaking snow all over the carpet. “Just one of those sudden storms you get down here, but we should find shelter tonight. Best stay below right now, till the motion eases. And don’t worry about the banging and thumping you can hear up front — we’re in a very uneven sea, waves hitting us from different directions. Just remember this thing’s an icebreaker. She’ll bust her way through anything.”
“Thanks, Bob,” said Kate. “Want some coffee?”
“Christ, that’s a good idea,” he said. “Black with sugar, if it’s no trouble. Can I take one up to the Captain, same way?”
“Yessir,” she said. “Why don’t I give you a pot of it? I’ll clip it down, save you throwing it all over the deck.”
Bob Lander chatted to Professor Townsend for a few minutes while he waited for the coffee, but he wasn’t really listening to the American expert on the unstable southern ozone layer. He was preoccupied with the grim Antarctic storm and by the thumps against the bow, the dull, shuddering rhythmic thud of the big waves. There were too many of them. And a couple of times Bob sensed a more hollow clang, although the sound was muffled in this part of the ship. It was the pattern that bothered him, not the noise. He quickly excused himself, telling Kate he’d be right back, and stepped out into the gale, making his way up the companionway toward the bridge.
Outside he could really hear the shriek of the storm, the wind slicing through the upperworks, moaning across the great expanse of the water, then rising to a ghastly higher pitch with each thunderous gust. The sound of Cuttyhunk lurching forward into the waves had an eerie beat of its own: the big thump of the bow, followed by the slash of the spray across the ship, and the staccato clatter-clatter-clatter of a steel hawser from a topping lift whacking against the after mast. Bob Lander could see ice forming along the tops of the rails and on the winch covers. If this had been winter the ice would soon have required men with axes to hack it off before it became too heavy for the plunging foredeck. But at this time of year the temperature would rise when the storm passed.
“One heck of a summer day,” Bob muttered as he shoved his way through the bridge door, listening carefully for the odd noise he had heard below. Tug Mottram had also heard something. He turned to face Lander and spoke formally in the terse language of the US Navy. “Go and check that out will you, Bob. It’s for’ard I think. And for Christ’s sake be careful. Take a coupla guys with you.”
Bob Lander made his way down to the rolling deck and rounded up a couple of seamen from the crew dormitory. All three changed into wet suits and pulled on special combination fur-lined Arctic oilskins, sea boots, and safety harnesses. They clipped onto the steel safety lines and fought their way across the foredeck, where the noise grew louder. Every time the ship rode up, there was a mighty thump against the bow.
“FUCK IT!” roared Bob Lander above the wind. “It’s that FUCKING anchor again. Worked loose just like it did in that sea off Cape Town.” And now he yelled across to Billy Wrightson and Brad Arnold, “WE’LL TIGHTEN UP ON THAT BOTTLE SCREW STOPPER AGAIN. THEN LET’S GET DOWN INTO THE PAINT SHOP AND CHECK FOR DAMAGE.”
Just then a huge wave broke almost lazily over the bow. All three men were suddenly waist deep in the freezing water and were saved from going over the side only by the harnesses, which held them to the safety lines. For the next five minutes they heaved and tugged at the crowbar, tightening the stopper. They then struggled back to the bulkhead door and bumped and lurched their way to the paint shop. Bob Lander was secretly dreading the damage caused by the swinging half-ton anchor crashing against the hull.
As he opened the door to the forepeak area, tons of seawater surged out from the shop, sending all three men flying as it rushed through the lower deck. Lander, back on his feet, ordered Wrightson to have the engineer activate the pumps. Then he moved forward into the paint shop. The gaping hole on the starboard side two feet above the deck told him all he needed to know. The huge anchor had worked its way loose and had bashed a jagged rip into the steel plating of the hull. Worse yet, the seam between two plates had given way. “God knows how far down that rip might travel in a sea like this,” he thought.
Bob Lander knew two things had to be done. Fast. The hole had to be temporarily patched, and Cuttyhunk had to run for cover, out of this dangerous weather to the nearest safe anchorage, and make a proper repair.
He shouted to Brad Arnold to get together a group of six men, including the engineer, to go for’ard and shore up the bow inside the paint room and shut it off securely. “The anchor’s secure for the moment, so get to it, Brad. I don’t want that split to get one inch bigger, and I want the water confined to the one compartment. When you’ve done, set a watchkeeper at the bulkhead door.”
Bob Lander returned to the bridge and told Tug Mottram what the Captain had already guessed. “Bottle screw again, Bob?” Mottram asked.
“Yessir. We have the anchor back tight on the screw and properly wired down. But we have to find some good shelter. There’s a lot of water getting into the paint shop. You can see daylight through a big crack in the hull. Brad’s shoring up around the hole, but we need to weld it, real soon, otherwise I’m afraid it’ll run right down the seam. We can’t do that kinda job out here.”
“Okay, KIT! How far to Kerguelen?”
“Just about eighty miles, sir. At this speed we ought to be in there sometime around 0400.”
“Okay, check the course.”
“Present course is fine, we’ll come in past Rendezvous Rock, twelve miles north, then we can run down the leeward side into Choiseul Bay and hopefully get out of this goddamned weather.”
“This ain’t gonna get any better for a day or two. I guess we’ll have to cope with a beam sea, Kit, but if we stay to the east side of the Ridge, it should be a bit calmer. I don’t suppose the eggheads will be too happy altering course away from their research area.”